Thought it an interesting discussion, so I will also
contribute my 2 cents worth of open-source speculation;

Open source is thriving. Open source is a funny hobby,
that
allows individuals to gain experience, improve their social
networks and have fun while doing it.

Open source does not depend on the succes of Linux or
of
any other "open" platform, because the two things are
fundamentally different things.

Linux and all its related projects inspire lots of
aspiring
young programmers to get into the open source world. Linux
is a crusade, a quest, a holy grail, that provide a focus-
point for a lot of programming activity.

Linux makes it possible for all the distributed
decision
makers to make autonomous decisions that have as a focus-
point what efforts will be to the good of the Linux
community. However, due to the scattered activity and the
absence of any real authority in the community, most or all
decisions are made with a lack of information that prevents
any decision from being optimal.

Of course there are several kinds of levels of
decisions
that are continually made. Decisions are made for a
specific project, regarding how feature X should be
implemented, whether feature X should be implemented at
all, and decisions about who writes the documentation, or
maintains the website or provides user support etc etc. I
think this level of decision making is working flawlessly.
All well-functioning open source projects have this level
of decision making taken care of, that's what the project
is all about.

However, the project doesn't contemplate the fact that
5
other projects exist that are spending time doing the exact
same thing. All 6 projects are convinced that they're
creating the best solution to the "problem" that this class
of projects aim for, and none or very few of the projects
cooperate amongst themselves. This is a new level of
decision making. An absent level of decision making,
because no decisions are made. The decision is left to
evolution; the most stubborn project wins (or best if
you're an optimist). This kind of decision making incurs a
horrendous amount of replicated work, that is useless if
any long-time success of the "open source crusade" is
intentioned.

There is no way to make people give up this mode of
operation, because the open source world is fundamentally
an ego-boosting business. It's just not as cool to work on
someone else's project. You can do the stuff he's doing
better, and you're going to show it to the World. Linux is
about ego boosting, and many developers work for projects
related to the primary open source platforms to be a part
of, and thereby gain part of the prestige that the
platforms provide. Ego boost is measured in number of
users, but most developers are kidding themselves if they
say that they are working on their project for their users.
We're only human.

At the same time, because the whole thing is a
voluntary "for fun" hobby, no one but the most
visionary/obstinate is interested in working on all the
dull bits and pieces that are essential for the mass of
projects to be able to function together.

This is why the open source community has got to come
to
terms with the fact that open source software projects like
Linux will always be a niche, because it's made for the
good of the developers, not for the good of the users. I
think thats only fair, because it's the developers who have
spent countless hours of their life working on cool
software.

To conclude; open source as a creative hobby is far
from
dead, but a user-focused open source platform is a dead
end.

In the following I will adher to the established
Advogato
trend of partitioning my diary into sections

Books

Finished reading "Flashman and the Redskins", yet another
refreshing read about the english voyeuer and hen-teaser
Sir. Harry Flashman, knight of the order of Bath, holder of
the Victoria Cross, the order of the Elephant (funny for a
dane), the congressional medal of Honour, and several other
ill-deserved honourary titles. This book takes place both
in the year of the gold boom of 1849, as well as 27 years
later, in 1876, where he takes part in the "battle" of
little Big Horn.

Because I've run fresh out of Flashman books, because I
didn't get any for christmas (sigh), I've started reading a
book by Rose Tremain, entitled "Music & Silence", about
a
english musician who get's hired at the court of the danish
king Christian IV in the 1630's. Very relaxing.

Inspired by reading joelonsoftware.com, I
ordered "Peopleware" and "High stakes, no prisoners" from
amazon, which I will be looking forward to reading.

Work

No work until january 3rd :) Although I at the moment don't
know what other uses I can make of my time, I probably need
some time off.

Advogato

How about an option to "show recent diary entries, without
observer diaries". In either case I really don't mind if a
spammer writes a few diary entries once in a while. It's
really quite interesting that someone can be so incredibly
bored that he spams a site as effectively "boring"
and "dry" as advogato :)

Programmer-philosophy

Sometimes I worry that we as programmers will run out of
cool software to write. When the ultimate operating system
exists running the ultimate productivity apps, and when
every industrial sector has killer stock-management and
auto-ordering, auto-configurating management programs. When
hospitals have the best patient monitoring software that
money can buy, when military weapons and space rockets as
well as crude household equipment never fail. What if new
software becomes unneccesary, or what if the need for new
software stabilizes at a level supportable by very few
people given the ultra-high-productivity languages and
tools that are made for that purpose?

This might very well happen in our lifetime, and sometimes
I wonder if all we're doing as programmers is working
towards the day where we will all be obsolete or at least
to a large extent neglectable.

I try to console myself with the thought that humans are
basically vain creatures, who will always desire new and
improved versions, if not to have better software, then to
follow the newest trends and the newest fashion.

Maybe software will some day not be a matter of "pushing
the envelope", but instead of polishing new and improved
slick interfaces to the same low-level implementations of
this years "software-fashion".

I guess that development would basically be a good thing,
because it would mean that the basic infrastructure will
already be in place, software and computers and the
possibilities they provide will be a commodity taken for
granted. I think the development is inevitable, given the
basic "construct-once-use-in-all-eternity" nature of
software.

It's like being amongst the many people who are building
the big railways across asia or the north american
continent. While building them we are heroes, but when the
tracks are complete, we better start look for some
alternative ways to make ourselves useful, because history
will not be looking back.

I have been reading some more of the "Flashman" series. I
finished "Flashman and the Dragon", and am now
reading "Flashman and the Redskins". It's some pretty funny
books, that have an entertaining way to convey some
impressions from the world as it may have been around the
1840-60's.

I saw a link on Slashdot (oh no, not another Slashdot-
reader) pointing to www.joelonsoftware.com, so
therefore I've been reading some of his "rants" about the
software industry. He really has some very good points, and
I recommend reading the articles as they have sound advice
on subjects ranging from employment policies to GUI design.

It's soon christmas, but work continues to be as stressing
as ever - I need a vacation soon.

I've pretty much decided to follow a course at university
next semester, dealing with techniques for creating
adaptive "artificial intelligence" algorithms using Prolog.

Maintaining an online diary does provide a lot of censuring
constraints on what can be written.

I feel like I've been so busy lately it's difficult to
track the days. The past two weeks, when it was friday I
wondered how the week had passed by so quickly. But still,
I guess some stuff must have happened since my last diary
entry from the 10th. So, let's go through it little by
little, as I remember it.

There was election in Denmark, and a new government got
elected. I don't know how that will affect the daily life,
but I guess it will probably be 95% same-ol-same-ol, which
is fine.

I haven't had much time to read lately, but this saturday I
bought two books; a Kurt Cobain biography, and a book
modestly entitled "Civilizations". I've read the Cobain
biography, which was kinda interesting. I've always been a
fan of Nirvanas music, and it's impossible to avoid
becoming fascinated by Cobains short, tragic and eventful
life story. I didn't know a lot about Cobain before reading
the book, but now at least I have some understanding of
what his music was about, and what made life so hard for
him. I still think of Nirvanas unplugged show in mtv, as
mtv's finest hour. Reading about the circumstances of the
show, didn't make it less interesting. The book made me
think of a lot of things, among the more superficial, how
eventless the music scene has become, and how 90% of all
popular bands are totally worthless and uninteresting. sigh.

I'm going to read the "Civilizations" book soon (kind of a
gamble book-wise), but first I'm reading a book
called "Flashman and the Dragon", a book recommended to me
by a friend.

I have been working a lot on packaging at work lately,
trying to make the search engine more of a packaged
product. It's one thing to write a piece of software that
performs a given task, but it's quite another to create
logical product boundaries, and decide what features
arguably belong in the product, and which ones don't. Then
there is pricing policies, license policies, extra features
policies, support policies, maintainance policies, customer
support, product tailoring and more. Thankfully I only have
a small part of that responsibility, but it makes you think
about how a better focus on the big picture of product
development would have avoided many problems. On the other
hand, theres the problem of evaluating which problems could
have been avoided by better planning, and which problems
would have surfaced no matter what. After all, it's
impossible to plan every stumbling block in advance.

I've decided to be more active in my studies next semester.
The last year, I've used too much time working, and too
little time studying. In fact, I haven't had a single
course this entire year, but now I've reached a point where
I'm beginning to actually feel inspired for some more
studies. There was a reason for not studying the last year,
I've not really been in the mood for written projects or
courses or exams or stuff like that. I hope that has
changed now.

Advogato as a community is a funny animal. Unlike most
other communities which are by nature focused on
discussions and direct interchange between participants,
Advogato is most of all (in my mind) a forum where people
publish their immediate thoughts and diary entries, with no
particular audience in mind. Of course the other readers of
advogato is the audience, but the connection is very
indirect. The diary entries are like a continuous stream of
consciousness which is fed into the community as a
testimony of the daily lives of other in the community.
Most readers of a given diary entry does not know the
person writing the entry, but still people recognize user
names from previous entries, and gradually get an
impression of that person. Of course it's impossible to
follow all "threads" of diary entries, so instead you
naturally "pick up" a couple of people (who you don't know)
and follow their diaries. I don't why, and I don't know if
it's only me (which I doubt). I guess its both natural
curiosity, and at the same time the desire to assert that
ones everyday feelings are shared by others in
this "community". At times I fear that advogato attracts
narcissists. At times I fear that I am a narcissist, in a
culture of self-love gone wrong. Or maybe I've rust read
too much Cobain biography in the weekend :)

These are busy times. I've hardly had time to read, and
have only read Couplands new book, "All families are
phychotic". I like most of Couplands books, and this one is
no different. All the books are different, yet share the
same style of writing, which although sometimes being on
the verge of becoming too "chic", is always refreshing.

At work I'm becoming more and more involved in non-coding
stuff, and although I've always thought that was a thing to
avoid, it's currently quite interesting, and is a nice
variation, although I fear the price will be paid along the
road in terms on missing product development.

Today I bought Monty Pythons complete set of Flying Circus
shows on dvd. Although I just had to buy it, at the same
time I felt ripped off at the shameless prices they asked
for it. I mean, how can a work that has been sold and
resold so many countless time, continue to be sold at
almost-as-new prices?

Finished reading a book called Marcus the Roman, about a
roman who happens to be in Jerusalem at the time of the
crucifiction of Christ. The book provides an interesting
speculation (its pure fiction) about how the events at the
time may have been experienced by some of the
contemporaries, and is as such very interesting.

Lots of stuff at work, so much to do, so little time. I
think I need to learn myself to take the necessary time to
prioritize my actions on a given day. Friday I fixed a bug
in the search engine which has bugged me for a long time,
so that was positive.

I'm involved in a software process workgroup at work,
where
I have been made responsible for constructing a software
requirements specication template for use in our company.
We have agreed to use the basic layout from Karl
Wiegers "Software requirements", but I'm wondering what's
a "typical" amount of standardization in that regard in
software companies in general. I guess it's really just a
matter of trying some alternatives until you find something
that works in the specific context of your organization.

We have started playing some quake arena at office,
it's
good with some fast-paced action once in a while :-)

Oh, and I bought Dead Man on dvd - Neil Youngs
soundtrack
for that movie is so cool, so cool.

Btw, I think lkcl's and others work on
dce/rpc support is great. I think of their work as one of
the few examples of a really constructive effort to
increase the long-term viability of Linux as a server
platform.

Things have been busy at work lately, and it seems like I
have somehow become involved with most of the ongoing
projects there. But I guess that's cool, because then at
least I don't have to worry about not having anything to do
at work ;-)

I guess I havent experienced anything interesting since
last time (do I ever?), but I at least just wanted to add
this entry to show that time hasn't gone by without
leaving a mark. Oh wait, I read most of Karl
Wiegers "Software requirements" so I actually did somehing
active :) (and I also bought a new cellphone and did tons
of other things that are meaningless to tell about). And
yesterday, I won a small tournament of table fussball at
work :)

Spent the weekend at my fathers new house away from the
computer (well almost :-)). Read an annotated book-style
danish version of Dantes "Comedy". Reading the entire book
in verse form was just a bit more than I dared, but reading
the revised version was interesting, because the author had
intermixed comments that related the original story to
Dantes contemporary history. One of the most interesting
things I realized was that the part about being "lost in a
dark wood" which was also the thought that was the central
aspect of "in a dark wood wandering", was also one of the
central themes in "Comedy". Ah well, I may be a litterary
nimwit, but I still find it fascinating :)

I have been following the debate about "recovering from a
morale slump" with interest. Although I wouldn't say I
suffer from writers block to any bad extent generally, I
know the feeling of not being motivated. I think one of the
most true points made was the one about the necessity of
feeling that the work one does matter somehow. I think
thats one of the central problems of software construction
as it is today.

Everyday thousands, in fact millions, of programmers write
software that share so many similarities that it would be a
far stretch of the imagination to talk about the "art" of
software development. An analogous example from "real life"
might be the contrast between an art painter, and a painter
of walls. Both use paint, but the big difference lies in
the artist making a unique work, whereas the painter of
walls is simply painting "yet another wall".

Perhaps the average everyday programmer just has to come to
terms with him just being a "painter of walls" in that
sense. It's tempting for the everyday programmer to think
he's an art painter. But there can only be so many art
painters. We must strive to become art painters, and use
this striving to avoid thinking about that what we're
currently painting is walls.

I've finished "In a dark wood wandering" which is a very
well-written story about factional strife in medieval
feudal France in the early 15th century. I am now going to
read an old classic that I've heard about for years but
still haven't taken the time to read - Steve
McConnells "Code Complete". I'm looking forward to it - he
really knows how to write books that are both educating but
also entertaining to read. If it wasn't because he
obviously has deep knowledge of the subjects he writes
about you might be tempted to call him a giant fuckwit :-)

Right now I really feel like starting to write on a a
medieval strategy game incorporating elements of feudal
obligations, trade and factional strife. The problem is
that I know myself too well to believe that I would be able
to see it through before I loose my enthusiasm. So, if
you're reading this, are very dedicated and are also a
world-class graphician, then send me a mail ;-) (like that
would ever happen)

I hacked together a small basic set of dx8 sprite/texture
classes, and it's just great how much the dx api has
improved since earlier versions :-)

11th of september was a strange day, and somehow the days
continue to be strange.

I am anxious about how the world will look as a result of
the attack on the US. Maybe something good will come of it,
but I doubt it. I understand the rage of the americans, and
I think retribution is justified, but I fear nothing good
will come of it. I watched CNN from just after the second
plane hit the WTC and it was really weird to just stand and
see the plot unfold - the buildings burning and then
falling down, and afterwards the news about the pentagon
and the believed car bomb outside the state department.

... also in the news (we are all becoming cnn zombies);

I have now received a new more game-enabling computer at
home, and has also begun to toy around a bit with directx
8. Last I had a serious look at directx was around
directx5, and my how the api has changed since then. But
thankfully it has changed to the better :-) I really just
love the thought of vertex and pixel shaders, and really
hate that it's not a Geforce 3 I ordered ;-)

I have read Microserfs for the umpteenth time, and I am now
reading "In a dark wood wandering" by Hella Haase, which
takes place in medieval france in the beginning of the 15th
century. It's very much concerned with intricacies of high
politics, and has a dark looming feeling over it which is
kinda inspiring. It's also funny to read the introduction
about how the book was translated from its original
language dutch, to english in a process that took over 25
years, because the translater after several years died
during translation, whereafter the almost finished
manuscript lay in his appartment for 20 years until it was
salvaged after a fire. Reading that story reminds you how
warped our modern idea of deadlines sometimes seem.